Finland top performer of 2012 so far, says Russell

The Russell Developed Europe index performance since the start of 2012 suggests Finland is the region’s strongest country, with Spain, Italy and Greece the worst performers.

The index is currently showing just five markets have made positive returns – led by Finland’s 2.3% – but that eight markets have lost money.

Greece’s loss of -8.4% means that Finland has outperformed the worst index consitutuent by about 10% in just the first 11 days of the calendar year – or the equivalent of a daily 1% loss against the best performing market for any investors in Greece.

Unsurprisingly, given the problems facing the eurozone, the returns of the countries in the index have underperformed Russell indices tracking individual businesses, such as the Russell 1000 index.

John Velis, Russell Europe’s head of capital markets, said: “European policy issues appear to be the biggest source of systemic risk, and current market returns may reflect continued investor unease with the Eurozone. Already this year we can see a broad divergence in the performance of European indexes and their North American counterparts.”